Planning your perfect craft room

I have been a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator for over 13 years and in that time I have been lucky enough to have four different craft rooms/spaces. You could say five as I used to use the family dining table and have to clear everything away in time for us to eat dinner.

Over the years my space has evolved as my needs and the quantity of supplies I own has grown. I am lucky enough to have a whole room dedicated to my Stampin’ Up business. Most recently I have been able to spend some time making the space I have, work in the best way possible for me.

I have learned a lot and made mistakes over the years and I wanted to share this insight with you in the hope I can help you plan your perfect craft room/craft space no matter how big or small! Let me help you avoid costly mistakes and design a space that works well as well as looking pretty and clutter free.

The video shared below is my new re-designed craft space. I am so pleased with it and it is working really well. Throughout this week I will go into more detail on the specifics of designing your craft room in more blog posts so pop back to get more insight on how to make the perfect craft room/space for you.

To give you some background. This room had been my craft space for 3 years. When we moved into our home, this was the first room we worked on to get me and my business up and running. As a result I had not spent time in the room to understand the light and the space etc and ended up making mistakes with the layout and functionality.

This was how I had the room BEFORE the re-design.

My desk and office space was built in underneath the window and I crafted standing up on an island unit with my craft items stored in Kallax units behind me.

The challenges I had in my old craft space

• I get a bad back if I stand and craft
• I did not have enough room to spread out whilst crafting
• I had nowhere to photograph my projects. I need them to face the light but I could not get in front of the project to take the photo so my photos were always dark and at a weird angle.
• I had craft stuff on two walls of the room so I had to move around the room a lot to get what I needed when I crafted
• I ran out of room to store stamps and ribbon
• The open boxes looked messy
• I did not utilise all the space
• I could not craft with other people

So I switched the zones around when designing my new craft room and it is working so much better for me. I now get to sit at my desk (where I am the majority of the time) and I get to look out of the window and see what is going on. The back of my craft room is darker but that doesn’t affect my office/desk work. It’s much better for me to have natural light whilst I am crafting by the window.

This was my craft room in our old house. It was part of a new extension which we designed so its should have been perfect for me but I got carried away and designed things to look pretty rather than functional. I had already filled my shelf with stamps and punches so had to use the desk to store more. Things were stored in the cupboards above but whilst crafting I was up and down more than (well you can add the rest!).

And below is the little box bedroom in between my kids bedrooms which was my very first craft room just for me. It was small and I could reach from one side of the room to the other from my chair. It worked really well apart from not having enough room. I stored my stamps on thin shelves on one wall so I could see all the designs and I found that if something was out of sight I wouldn’t use it. I struggled to use my heat tool during the evenings though as I was worried that I would disturb the children 🙂

No matter what your craft space looks like or how much room you have, you can definitely make it work in the best way possible for you. Pop back tomorrow where I share how to zone your space and the storage solutions I use for storing my craft supplies.

Have a great day and hope to see you back here tomorrow!